


Coming Undone

by matthewcladdario (thunclerpuff)



Category: Shadowhunters (TV)
Genre: Ambiguous Relationship, Emotions all over the place, M/M, also emotions, but hey that's parabatai for you, canon up to 2x04, guest star Izzy Lightwood, it's pretty gay to me but i'm pretty sure it works as unrequited, jalec - Freeform, totally includes canon romantic feelings on Alec's part tho
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-23
Updated: 2017-01-23
Packaged: 2018-09-19 12:13:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,706
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9439907
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thunclerpuff/pseuds/matthewcladdario
Summary: He let Jace hug him, wrap his arms around him like Alec was the only thing not moving in the room, like he was the only thing that didn't scare him.It was terrifying, to feel that pressure on his shoulder.It was easy to carry, because Alec was born to endure pressure.// Snippets of Alec and Jace sharing a bed trough the years. Like boys do.Or, an emotional study of events that occurred as depicted in canon.Featuring your usual parabatai bond, some canon romantic feelings on Alec's part, and Jace being Jace (and I blame Dom for Jace being Jace). There's no actual romantic/freaky action, so it's up to you and how you want to interpret it.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Hello there! Quick notes before you start reading:  
> I completely ignored the fact there was only a handful of people during the parabatai ceremony- the more the merrier (and more embarassing.  
> Brocelind Plains are plains which are in Idris. Wow. Such eloquence.  
> Snippet 4. takes place in the night of the "we almost handed the cup to Valentine but no biggie".  
> You know when snippet 4.5 takes place.  
> Snippet 5 takes place in a hopefully near future, where Jace gets to sleep in a real bed among real people again.  
> Last but not least, enjoy!

**1.**

It wasn't the screaming that kept Alec awake at night.

He was a Shadowhunter, by legacy, by blood, by soul. Screaming wasn't unfamiliar.

(He often had woken up to his own voice, loud thrumming in his ears, the image of his father torn apart by demon claws, of his mother striking another blow, not even glancing back.

His father had lived, Alec's childhood had not.)

It wasn't the screaming that kept him awake, but the alien voice that carried it.

They had given the new boy the room next to Alec's. It was smaller than others that were available, and bare -no trace of anybody ever living there- but it was comfortable, and safe.

Alec had thought they had given him the room because he was a child.

He wasn't so sure anymore.

The more the day passed, the more he felt a thug in his throat telling him he was supposed to do something about it. About him. That the boy was just another task, another test. Somebody to take care of, to show he had grown up.

(Alec was older than the boy. It didn't seem that way.

Than again, Alec was short, and everybody seemed to forget he was already twelve. The boy, he was taller and had a slender face; he didn't seem like a kid as much as a young soldier.

He was barely older than ten.

Alec didn't know how he felt about that.)

It was the responsibility that kept Alec awake at night. The thought of how many hours he would have to train the following day, of how many books he would have to study. The amount of times his mother would have looked at him and expected to see a Lightwood worthy of his name; the amount of times his father would have adverted his eyes, not sure what to do with his older son.

(He knew Isabelle didn't care.

He knew Isabelle was happier.

He couldn't be Isabelle, no matter how much he tried.)

Alec was good when he was told what to do. He liked having a set goal, he liked having directions. He liked having laws to turn to, he liked to have something to guide him.

He wasn't good at doing things by himself.

He hadn't been told anything, but he had to do something, even if he didn't know what.

The eleventh night Jace slept and screamed in the room next to his, Alec climbed down his bed and reached for the door.

The hallway was dark and cold, and he was barefoot and only wanted to sleep.

(He realized much later -when Jace joked about it over breakfast, a fresh rune itching on his hip, feeling Jace's laugh in his bones- that what ultimately pushed him to go to Jace that night, was that he was tired of not getting any sleep.)

He pushed the door slowly, and found Jace restlessly turning and tossing in his bed, the covers a cage, his pillow drenched with sweat. His screams were hoarse and there was some unintelligible words slipped in between the cries.

Alec had never felt smaller.

(And never more free.

There were some things he could not fix.

That desperate suffering, that restless chasing of a light, Alec was powerless against.

So he thought at the time.)

He breathed in, as Jace finally woke up, curling on himself, his head between his knees.

Alec shouldn't have been there, shouldn't have seen.

Jace raised his head and saw him.

They looked at each other in the dim light, until Jace coughed, a hand before his mouth.

Alec took a step towards him.

Jace looked at him behind his trembling hand.

He wanted Alec to go away. He didn't want to be seen like that.

His eyes were wide and terrified.

Ashamed.

Alec wanted to tell him he shouldn't be, but some deep rooted part of his training, of his core, did not only recognize that shame, but share it.

He dropped his gaze, and got back to his room.

He went to bed with the sound of the door softly closing in his ears, over and over again.

  
  


When he met Jace over breakfast, he was eating and smiling with Izzy. He turned to say _hi_ , with the usual chipper, confident tone.

Jace, Alec realized, was so good at faking he could make you doubt anything.

It was a long day.

He missed almost all the targets -almost got Raj at least twice-, and nothing he read sticked to his brain.

Jace didn't show up for the whole day, training with Izzy in how to use a whip.

(They were the same age. They had the same heart.

They laughed when they were together. Alec didn't really laugh.)

It was a long day, like children's days can be.

When he got to bed, Alec was so exhausted by own ineptitude, he fall asleep faster that he ever did.

When he heard the screams, he woke up for spare seconds and slipped back into the darkness.

When the door opened, he was ready to jump off the bed.

Somebody was dead, somebody was hurt, there was something to kill.

It was just Jace, asking for help.

Not help. Comfort.

Alec had to remind himself how to breath.

He watched as Jace closed the door behind him. He didn't stop him.

He laid on his back, waiting.

Jace sat beside him, and laid on his back as well.

Neither of them slept for the rest of the night, and breathing never got easier.

Jace didn't scream.

  
  


He screamed the night after. And the one after that, and many more still.

They had immediately gotten into a habit, an unspoken accord. Jace would try and sleep on his own, fail, and slid into Alec's room. Alec didn't wake up anymore, not at the screams, not at the door opening.

(Jace had a way of living, it seemed, that didn't disturb Alec existence when given time to set.)

When he did wake up, he found Jace frowning in his sleep, restless, his breathing frantic but solid.

He couldn't do nothing more than witness Jace breaking down, and he wasn't asked to anything more.

  
  


It was not quite a month later, that Alec woke up in the middle of the night.

Jace was crying in his sleep.

Alec stopped breathing for enough time to draw him to a gulp in search of air when his body had had enough of his stillness.

Jace never cried. Not that he knew.

Screaming was familiar to him. Crying was not.

He woke up Jace before he could think. A small nudge on his shoulder, his palm flat against his drenched shirt.

Jace didn't even open his eyes, before raising an arm out of reflex, trying to get to Alec, close his hand around his throat.

But Alec was awake, and trained. He moved faster, grabbed Jace's upperarm, got him to lay back down on the mattress.

Jace's face was crossed with the lines of his tears and his sweat, his cheeks red and wet.

Alec wanted to cry as well, but he hold on.

He let Jace hug him, wrap his arms around him like Alec was the only thing not moving in the room, like he was the only thing that didn't scare him.

It was terrifying, to feel that pressure on his shoulder.

It was easy to carry, because Alec was born to endure pressure.

Alec held Jace until he got back to sleep, his head buried between Alec's chest and his chin. His hair was soft even as damp as it was.

Only then Alec made him lay down again, and got up.

He put on his boots, and went to the training room, one step after another.

Shadowhunters were already crowding the place, some getting back from a mission, some woken up by their pasts. Nobody noticed him, as it wasn't anything new for a Shadowhunter to train in the first hours of the morning, the limbo between the darkness and the life.

He throw an arrow after another, light slowly crawling into the room, his steps quick and precise, his mind clear of anything that wasn't the weapon coming alive under his steady hands.

He didn't miss a single target.

  
  


**2.**

Jace didn't made an habit out of sharing a bed with Alec.

He trained it to be a reflex.

When he was tired, or sick, or wanted to talk, his body didn't listen to what his mind had to say, and carried him across the hallway and into Alec's room.

(He had moved out of his small room at some point. One day Robert got back from one of his trip to Idris and stopped by to give him a gift, and noticed that he had outgrown his room. Jace hadn't really noticed until then, but after he did he suddenly couldn't bear it, every fiber of his being thriving for a change.

It was like that, with Jace.

He didn't notice things until he did, and it was a rocky road after the epiphany.)

Alec's bed was still more than big enough to host the two of them. They hadn't a child body anymore, but they were slender and boyish, and they could still fit without even touching.

(Jace hadn't really thought about the dynamic of that until later, when suddenly he couldn't fit on his side anymore, unless he pressed his shoulder to Alec, one leg left out of the bed, one foot on the ground.

Years later, it took him a conscious effort to think back to a time in which that hadn't been the norm. It took him even more effort to believe he had been taller than Alec.)

It were the early hours of his thirteen birthday when he roamed to Alec's room, not feeling particularly sad, or happy, or content. He was alive, nothing more, and he hated when he didn't feel anything. It was like standing on thin ice, uncertain if it would have carried his weight, or cracked and dragged him under.

He hated being uncertain.

So, he went to Alec.

But he met Isabelle and Maryse instead. He came to an alt, and they did as well.

“See? Jace is sneaking out of bed too. Everybody does it.”

“Even if everybody did it, Isabelle, it doesn't mean it's okay to do it. Especially not to get into a boy's room.”

“I wasn't getting into a boy's room, I was fetching a boy to bring him in the kitchen. We were going to make cookies.”

“Thank the Angel Maryse got you, then.” Jace had smiled, and made to move again.

But Maryse looked at him in the piercing way she usually reserved for her own blood.

“Go back to bed, Jace.”

“I am going to bed.” he said, and it was Isabelle's look to tell him it wasn't the thing Maryse wanted to ear.

“Your bed. You can talk to Alec in the morning. The two of you are always together anyway.”

Jace wanted to say it wasn't true. That Alec was fifteen and a soldier already, that he got out on missions he was cut out of, that it was the norm not to see Alec for days, not talk to him even when he was around, because they had different schedules, different lives.

It was Isabelle he always was with.

Isabelle, who was looking at him at to say to fly down, and he did. Nobody better than another troublemaker to measure the lengths to where it was safe to go.

“You need sleep, Jace. You look so thin.” Maryse added, her eyes getting as warm as they ever did, still sounding closer to a good teacher than a mother.

Jace nodded once and shoot a glance to Alec's room, his door slightly ajar. He always left it that way, since it got so squeaky when opened and closed.

Alec left it open because it would make too much noise otherwise.

He left it open to not wake anybody up, to make it more unlikely for someone to see Jace slid in. To hear him doing it. To know he did.

(Jace still remembers the sound of glass shattering in his head.

The sound of growing up, the sound he left his innocence at.

Isabelle didn't want to bake cookies, and maybe Jace wasn't too old to sleep in Alec's bed, but Alec was too old to let him.

It was a strange thing, growing up. Being a kid, and losing a piece here and there every day, until there were no more things that got unquestioned and unfiltered.

Starting to think, and never stop.)

“Right.” he heard himself saying, turning on his heels, slowly. “You're right. I should sleep.”

Maryse smiled at him, and briefly put a hand on his shoulder.

Isabelle's eyebrows were knitted together, her eyes softly squinted, her mouth a straight line.

(A sadness so pure Jace didn't learn to recognize as such until much later.)

“We'll both go back to sleep. Right, Iz?” he smiled at her, a smile that didn't made the corner of his eyes crinkle, a smile that was only a muscle memory.

She smiled back in almost a perfect mirror, and looped an arm trough Jace's.

They walked together to Jace's room, sharing the last moments of their childhood.

  
  


**3.**

Alec was trying so hard to fall asleep, he just kept getting angrier every second he spent awake.

(Alec spent a lot of time being angry, but he often liked blaming that anger on anyone but himself.)

He couldn't make out if he was upset, desperate or happy.

Desperately happy.

Happily desperate.

Completely screwed.

Sick.

He turned on his back, then on his side, than on his back again. He needed to shut his brain down, his feelings, everything. He needed a pause, he needed the darkness to come and find him.

Instead, he heard Jace down the hallway.

He stopped moving around, and laid on his back. As still as he could.

He could hear steps, long and confident and careful. He could tell they belonged to Jace, because he had grown used to tell them apart from anyone else's.

But it wasn't that. It wasn't conscious. He heard the steps, he knew them, but it was something else that made him feel it was Jace.

The same something that told him it was is own breaths he was listening to, or that it was his own hand resting against his ribs. A sense of belonging.

He was so overwhelmed for a second, he forgot his door squeaked when opened. He winced at the sound, and looked at Jace slipping in, closing the door behind him.

It was incredibly loud. He ought to get it fixed.

He hadn't got it fixed for a reason.

“Jace?” he asked, his voice drowsy, as Jace stepped closer to the bed. He laid down without asking, and fit just right in, a little on the edge, but comfortable enough.

There was almost no space between them.

(Alec could feel his skin burning.)

He was too close.

(He wasn't nearly close enough.)

“Hi.” Jace said, turning his face to Alec, bending one of his legs. “It's been a while.”

“You shouldn't be here.”

“Who cares. We're parabatai.” he said, and Alec wanted to cry and laugh and love and be happy.

He forced himself to breath. Jace grinned widely and Alec shook his head and looked at the ceiling.

“You know, Alec, I think you gave a heart attack to the silent brothers when you took of your shirt.”

Alec felt the laugh in his throat before it burst out of his mouth, leaving him almost choking on it, trying not to make more noise that he ought.

“I'm serious dude, you were turning your back to brother Enoch, but I swear I saw him getting as white as an anemic vamp. I'm positive he regretted his choice of entering the brotherhood.”

“ _Jace_.” it was a pleading more than a word, muffled by the laughter and the hand he was trying to block them with.

“It was pretty funny. It's a pity I've missed your mother's face when I _kneeled_.”

Alec felt his face catching fire, so he shoved Jace with his elbow.

“Hey, domestic violence on our first night already? You're a _monster_.”

Alec started laughing again, his breath coming short, and he tried to muffle it, but Jace joined and there was no way Jace Wayland was able to laugh without being loud, and boastful, and soon they were half crying and half suffocating and coughing, and it took Jace almost killing himself and having to sit upright to calm them down.

“Look at us. We're mental.” he said, shaking his head.

Alec sighed and didn't stop grinning.

“We are. And what's worst, I think I like it.”

“We're so beyond the point of no return.”

“I blame it on you. I was perfectly fine before you came and screw me over.”

“You know- I really want to say it's not true, but it is. It is.”

“It is.”

They looked at each other, smiling and half laughing and shaking their heads, until Alec swallowed down the last laughter and stared at Jace just because it was Jace.

He would grow out of it.

(But Jace was looking back, and he wasn't laughing anymore, and the moment had gone, and why was he still looking at him?

Maybe just because it was Alec.

And they would never grow out of it.)

“You know, I really thought you weren't going to show up.”

“I don't think doubting your parabatai is a great start to- the _parabatainess_.”

Jace's mouth twitched, but he simply slapped away Alec's hand, that had been moving between them in weird gestures.

“I have to confess something. I have a problem, in which I think everyone will leave me behind. I know it's difficult to believe they could, as charming as I am, but I think you ought to know that.”

“Really? I would ever never guessed. You pull it off.”

Jace smirked and laid on his back again. Alec smiled at him.

Somehow they had gotten closer, and now their shoulder were brushing, skin against skin. Alec breathed in and forced the awkwardness away.

He wasn't going to have the moment spoiled.

“Jace.”

“Trying to sleep here, Alec.”

Alec kicked him in the shin.

“ _Jace_.”

“Alec.”

(I love you.)

“Goodnight.”

“I love you.”

Alec missed a beat. He closed his eyes.

He could still hear Jace's laugh.

He smiled, a deep calm settling in chest he was sure he had never felt before.

“I love you too.”

  
  


**3.5**

(Jace had missed his mother face when he had kneel.

Alec often thought about it at the most random moments.

That Jace, who was so finely tuned to the essence of a Shadowhunter, had focused only on him. Despite how he was always trained to be aware of everything. Despite how odd and awkward it had been, to share a moment so intimate with so many people.

Years later, still, when he thought about the moment they became parabatai, he didn't think at the moment the world recognized them for what they were.

He thought of the night that followed, of sharing a bed with Jace. He thought of almost choking on his coffee when Jace had asked him to be bonded, he thought of the nights out at Tiki's. He thought of the laughs and the _I love you_ s, and of nights that had come before. Of Jace breaking down in his arms, of a row of target pierced in their heart.

He thought of Jace.)

“Alec?”

“Mh?”

“Nothing.”

“Then shut the fuck up.”

  
  


**4.**

Jace didn't talk.

Alec didn't answer.

Alec clenched his jaw when Jace's shoulder met his, their arm slotting against each other down to the elbow. Their hips almost touched, and their leg joined in one. Like they always did. Alec knew for a fact one of Jace's foot was on the floor.

That if he moved even an inch in his direction, Jace would fell off the bed and hopefully hurt his head and regain some of the common sense he had lost somewhere along the way, along with his dignity.

Alec didn't push.

“I'm still angry.” he said, eyes closed and lungs filled by the lemony scent of that stupid two-in-one shampoo/body shower Jace liked to immerse himself into.

He hated it. He hated lemons.

(He loved it, and would smell it all day long.

He still hated lemons.)

“I'm still not going to leave you.”

His voice was cracked and Alec knew Jace was crying.

Anger left his body like a wave retreating to the sea.

“You better not.”

He found Jace's hand and let him hold onto to it.

  
  


**4.5**

(He left.)

  
  


**5.**

He woke up to the distinct scent of sweat and lemons that Jace often brought with him.

It almost felt like summer. Like they had just run under the sun of the Brocelind Plains, run until they were exhausted and had to laid down on the dewy grass, basking in the sun, short of breath but happy. A peaceful happiness that never carried over from Idris to New York, where every stone and every alley spoke of demons and work.

Alec didn't open his eyes. He took one long breath, his lips slightly parting before curling in a smile that almost hurt his cheeks.

He should have not been happy. Not with Valentine on the run and what had been going on, and how irremediably screwed they all were. Not with a war that had already had his opening act.

And he wasn't happy, precisely.

He was calm.

The world had got back to run at normal speed, had stopped going fastfoward and rewinding, always coming back to the same hollow dead end.

He had his entire soul back. He could breath, and feel whole, and share with someone the horrid, heavy anticipation of what had to come.

(He had his own stormy happiness back.)

He opened his eyes, and looked at Jace.

He seemed sound asleep. His chest was raising and falling regularly, each breath one and a half of Alec's. His hair was tangled up in a fluffy mane, his lips barely open.

Alec stared.

He stared as Jace's lips twitched into half a smirk, he stared as Jace moved his legs, shifting them to find another position, brushing and clashing against Alec's. He stared as Jace opened his eyes and turned to face him.

“Will ever come the day you won't know I'm awake?”

Alec fought against the fluttering of his eyelashes, closed his eyes a second, a wet knot in his throat.

“Nope. I could tell you why, I guess-” he began to answer, his voice hoarse and drowsy “-so that if you actually succeed at dying on me, like you tried at least nine times or so, you don't have to die without-”

“ _Me_? _I_ almost died on you?” Jace's voice railed up quickly.

Alec sighed. He knew the moment had to come.

He had hoped it wouldn't because he had carelessly brought it upon himself.

“You literally died in my arms, Alec. Doesn't matter for how long, you were gone. You're in no position to-”

“Nonsense. I knew I wouldn't die.”

“Alec. Trust me, your heart stopped beating. I felt it. You owe me. At least until- until the day you _actually_ die. You know what, you better not die before I do, because I am not going trough that again.”

“Jace.”

“Don't _Jace_ me. What was going through your head? Did you think that I would have been happy to be back it if you weren't going to be there?”

Alec stared at him, waiting for Jace to drop his gaze before Alec would, like he almost always did.

(Jace always fought softly.

He hardly rose his voice, and when he did, it still sounded like he blamed himself more than he blamed who he was fighting with.)

He didn't.

“I guessed I believed in you more than I believed in death.”

The breath Jace took was the longest Alec had ever heard him taking, pained and shaky, like it hurt to get air trough his body. He closed his eyes and faced the ceiling, rubbing his face with his hands while loudly exhaling.

Alec smiled, slowly, every piece back together.

(He could feel the menace above them.

He told himself to believe, once again.)

“Okay, we're changing the subject. Now.” Jace's words were watery and thick. He sniffed and looked back at Alec. “Like, your boots. Why. Who sleeps with his boots on?”

Alec grinned and nudged at him, tangling up their legs even more.

“I was tired.”

“You don't even unlace them, you monster. How much time can zip them down take? Three seconds?”

Alec sighed, but couldn't stop smiling.

(It wasn't often that Jace slipped into manic rambling, but when he did, Alec made sure to enjoy it.)

“I just realized, this means you don't lace them up properly. You're going die one day because you tripped on your own feet. And it will be such a pathetic way to die, they won't even burn your body. They will just let you be eaten by worms in the ground, and I will let them. I will. Actually, I shall dance on your grave. Which, by the way, will bear the words _Alec Lightworm – his parabatai told him to lace up his boots; he didn't listen._ ”

“Jace.”

“Yeah, I know, I wanted to stop talking about you dying on me. Apparently, I can't. I say it's your fault.”

Alec predicted the shove, and caught Jace's hand in his to stop him. Jace didn't struggle to get free of his grip.

Alec smiled at the ceiling.

“You frown when you sleep.”

“Mh?”

“You frown. I never saw you sleeping without you looking like you just spotted a raft of ducks in the distance. That's how I know you're awake.”

“I do?” Jace asked.

(Alec lost a beat.

He had never heard his voice like that;

Stripped both of confidence and suffering.

Like he had finally reached Jace at his core, like he could finally put the puzzle in a frame and lock it somewhere, never to be touched and blemished.)

Alec didn't look at him.

“Yeah, you do.”

He answered softly, barely opening his mouth.

They went silent, breathing together.

Alec could only feel a quiet buzz where his body met Jace's. He could feel it where their legs met, tangled up in a mess.

His whole arm purred, pressed with Jace for the most of his length. Their fingers were loosely laced together, brushing against Alec's ribs.

They shared the same heartbeat.

“Alec.”

(I love you.)

Alec broke down.

“Dammit, Jace, shut up.” he cried out, and he never cried, and if he did was always because of Jace, Jace, Jace, and his stupid being Jace and bringing stupid emotions into his otherwise perfectly quiet life and making him feel like he was a broken mess that only hold up thanks to tape and stitches, and it would have been Jace's fault when he died of a heart attack, too young for heart disease without a genetic predisposition and-

he was crying against his hand, when he felt Jace laughing, a happy wet laugh that got closer and closer while Jace held on to Alec, wrapping an arm around his chest, pressing his nose against Alec's neck, his lips and teeth scraping at his skin while he laughed, and Alec didn't know if he was wet with his own tears or Jace's anymore, and he turned his face and buried it in Jace stupid lemony hair and put his arms around him, keeping him close, closer than he should if he had wanted not to choke on every breath.

It was terrifying, to let himself break down like that.

It was easy, because Jace was there to bear it.

He let Jace hold him until he stopped shivering, until he had somewhat felt tired enough, safe enough, to fell asleep.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> (Lord, I have so much more snippets to insert that didn't fit the theme. Damn.)


End file.
